Slow cooker lamb dhansak

 Bart Simpson

The bard of farting

Beans, beans, the musical fruit. You've got to love your legumes. I've already done a few dishes containing beans and they really make a hearty dish all the more hearty. Of course, the undigestible complex carbohydrates they contain make a good food source for the bugs that live up your arse. And when they get fed, they celebrate by making methane and hydrogen. This is when the brass section gets cued into the performance and Le Petomaine makes an appearance.

 French professional farter, Le Petomaine from the late 1800s

So we have beans, peas and other pulses which make up a substantial source of protein for a huge part of the human population. The soya bean alone feeds vast swathes of the far eastern portion of the Asian continent, especially as bean curd, not to mention being a fundamental component of the cuisine of literally billions of people when fermented in various ways in the shape of soy sauce, black bean sauce or the myriad of coloured pastes in Chinese, Japanese and Korean dishes (yellow bean, red bean, black bean, gochujang etc). Further west, the legume of choice becomes the lentil. Given the number of devout Hindus in India, they consume huge amounts of lentils as a good source of protein. So much so that there are numerous forms of these titchy little pea things available. This page lists 12 types of the flatulent little fuckers.

Lentils were something of a joke when I was growing up, being the relatively affluent, privileged Western European with a diet containing meat that I am (certainly compared to your average Indian of the time, anyway). Lentils were the staple of weirdo vegetarians, we didn't eat that sort of thing. Well, apart from when money got a bit tight (as I say, relatively affluent, compared to truly impoverished people in the Sub-Continent), so there was a trip to the butchers to get a batch of bacon bones and a thick, hearty broth was made up with these, with scraps of meat on them, and yellow split peas, a form of lentil. It lasted for days, and it was my first actual exposure to the lentil.

Anyway, back to the recipe in hand. Dhansak, though a popular dish in UK curry houses, is actually a recipe brought to India by Parsis, an ethnic group originating in Persia. It's a very tasty take on a curry, with the lentils bulking up the whole thing, and giving a nutty taste and adding richness to a sweet and tangy flavoured sauce.

TIMING
Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 20-30 minutes on the pre-ccoking hob, 5 hours in the slow cooker
(You could do this on the hob or in the oven, though cooking time would be shorter.  See notes for more details)

INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 large onion, sliced
4 cloves of garlic
chunk of fresh ginger, finely chopped (aboout the size of a thumb, about 3cm by 2cm)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground turmeric
½ tsp ground fenugreek seeds
½ tsp ground black pepper
piece of cinnamon bark (about 5cm)
1 bayleaf
1 star anise
3 green cardamom pods
3 whole cloves
A pinch of onion seeds
1.2 tsp salt
1-2 fresh green chillies, finely chopped (depends on heat)
200g diced lamb
150g tomatoes blended up, or peeled and chopped
Juice of half a lemon
2 tsp sugar
Half a butternut squash, peeled, cored and chopped into bite-sized chunks
75g dried chana dhal

The all important spices

(from the top and clockwise: ground corander, star anise, cardamom pods, cloves, cround cumin, ground turmeric, salt, fenugreek seeds, onion seeds, bay leaf, cinnamon stick)

 

Ginger, garlic and onion

RECIPE
Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan and add the onions, garlic and ginger.

Fry for about 5 minutes until the onions are soft, then add the spices and salt.

Continue stirring so it doesn't stick, adding a splash of water if it looks a bit dry.

Add the lamb and keep sauteing for about 5 more minutes, until the meat is browned.

Throw in the tomatoes, lemon juice, sugar, chana dhal and squash and stir wel.

Add 300ml water and bring to a gentle boil.

Pour the lot into your slow cooker, set it to medium, cover, and leave it for a few hours (at least 5 in a slow cooker, but see notes for alernative methods).

Allow the amazing aroma permeate your house, then serve with pilau rice,and naan bread or add a vegetable side dish if you're hungry.

Served up, ready to eat

NOTES
This is made with lamb, but I've also made it with chicken (bone-in thighs, skinless), though you could cook it for less time, or would also work with beef.

I used chana dhal, which is a fairly large lentil, almost as big as a chickpea, which holds its shape well, becoming tender but still quite firm after a long, slow cook. Regular red lentils have a tendency to disintegrate, which would also work, though will add a different texture to the dish

Other vegetables would work in this, but sturdy root vegetables stand up to long cooking. Mushrooms would also work, espeicaly if you did this with beef instead of lamb. Pumpkins, like squashes, work so well in a curry, however.

You could  make this on the hob or even in a casserole dish in the oven. You could probably get away with a couple of hours on the stove, and maybe three in the oven. The joy of the slow cooker is the fact that the dish is you can stick it on, forget about it until you're ready to eat it

This blog entry sees me return to a subject I've touched on before in this blog, the act of farting. Farting is, and always will be, hilariously funny. Don't take my word for it, ask my son (9 years old at the time of writing). He'll agree.

Why were lentils regarded as something of a joke food when I was growing up? This is part of the reason why:

The Young Ones and the wonder of lentils, as long as they're not South African

Aloo gobi (potato and cauliflower curry)

I have mentioned vegetarianism in previous posts, how I even tried being a vegetarian as a pretentious student. What I didn't mention then was that the reason for this was, in part, to get on the good side of a girl who was in the same student hall as me that I quite fancied. It's a scientifically proven fact* that most guys who perform a coup de theatre in terms of lifestyle in their late teens, like turning away from meat for instance, are generally doing it to get into the pants of someone they like. Anyway, at the time, my justification was the poor yield of protein per hectare from raising livestock for food compared to arable farming which was morally wrong when people were starving in the world. Using this justification I could then allow eating lamb doner kebabs as sheep were raised on scrubby hills that had no use in growing vegetables, and fish, since this was mainly gotten from out of water.The spell of vegetarianism lasted for a few weeks before I lapsed back into eating meat properly. A legacy of this time is the fact that I have absolutely no qualms about eating vegetarian food on a regular basis.

More recently, it has become well publicised that meat production leaves a far larger carbon footprint than growing vegetables alone. While it's true that most people in the west have larger carbon footprints than a sasquatch in snow shoes that are five sizes too big, and any change in diet would have a pretty minute effect on this, it still gives a chance to prevent the liberation of a tiny amount of additional carbon into the atmosphere. There are other ways to reduce your carbon footprint, like not flying, having children, having pets or driving a car, but who wants to stop doing any of that?

One of the main causes of the increased carbon emission through raising livestock is the effect of intestinal gas from cattle. Cow farts are making the world a warmer place as they release methane which is 23 times worse at causing atmospheric warming than carbon dioxide. One possibility to offset this might be to stop the cows farting in the first place and one way of doing this is using charcoal. Perhaps giving Ermintrude a load of charcoal tablets might help alleviate this source of pollution. It may even have the added bonus of the cows shitting ready-formed BBQ briquettes, so everyone's a winner. Well, apart from the cows, who would be producing the fuel by which they would be cooked of a nice summer evening.

Charcoal tablets

A possible solution to global warming

from http://www.hollandandbarrett.com/shop/product/lifeplan-windaway-activated-charcoal-capsules-60002792?skuid=002792&&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_adid=185747624549&utm_adgID=58700002241441623&gclid=CMC26Z3xjtUCFYIaGwodisEPAw

So where am I going with this? Well, it's another vegetarian recipe as I am planning a regular meat free dinner every week. India has more vegetarians than the population of most countries, so it's not surprising that some of the very best vegetarian cuisine comes from the subcontinent.

I have done a recipe for another potato curry previously, but this is a take on an aloo gobi, where the spud is partnered with cauliflower in one of the tastiest vegetable curries found on the menu of an Indian takeaway. As I mentioned before, potatoes have enough substance to them to make a decent main course in their own right, plus the lentils add extra protein and make for an even more substantial meal.

*It probably isn't scientifically proven, but I've not looked at the literature so it might be.

TIMING
Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 70 minutes

INGREDIENTS
150g dried red lentils
200g cauliflower florets broken into bite-sized pieces
450g potatoes, peeled and cut into 2-3cm cubes
1 medium onion, sliced
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin seeds
½ tsp whole fenugreek seeds
½ tsp ground black pepper
½ tsp black mustard seeds
½ tsp onion seeds
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground tumeric
pinch of chilli flakes
Salt

It's another spice picture
(from 10 o'clock: coriander, black pepper, mustard seeds, chilli flakes, cumin seeds, fenugreek seeds, onion seeds with paprika in the middle)

RECIPE
Boil the lentils for 20 minutes, strain and set aside.

Heat the oil in a good, heavy pan and add the spices, onion and garlic and gently fry for 10 minutes.

Add the potatoes and continue to fry for another 10 minutes.

Throw in the cauliflower and keep stirring for another 5 minutes.

Add the lentils to the pan and add 200ml water and salt according to taste.

Bring to the boil, cover, lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes (until the potatoes become tender).

Serve with rice and/or naan bread, on its own or with another curry or two
.

 Aloo gobi 

(on the left, with a courgette curry on a bed of plain boiled rice)

NOTES
In contrast to most of my previous curry recipes, this dish uses lots of earthy rather than the more aromatic spice flavours and doesn't have a tomato base. It is a good contrast to these if you are serving more than one dish

I used floury old potatoes in this recipe as the texture works better than new potatoes.

A cow farts aren't the only trump that cause a stink and fucks up the world.

Traditionally, cauliflower has been a fairly unassuming vegetable, being boiled on its own or perhaps upping the ante a little with cauliflower cheese, the vegetarian staple of the 70s. However, cauliflower is currently having a bit of a surge in popularity as a "low carb" food and is finding uses as a substitute for rice, pizza base or even steak. Why stop there? How about cauliflower chocolate brownies, cauliflower yoghurt, cauliflower flavoured condoms? It's fucking cauliflower for Christ's sake. It's a lovely vegetable in its own right and doesn't need to be given superpowers. However, if you are using it in some other dish, I would say that aloo gobi is as good as it gets.

There aren't a huge number of songs that mention curries in general, let alone aloo gobi in particular. One that does, however, is this spoof of Kula Shaker's Govinda, by former Radio 1 DJs Mark and Lard performing as their band the Shire Horses.